Solidarity 263, 7 November 2012

£83.5 billion to buy a like-for-like replacement for Britain’s Trident nuclear-armed submarines — the Tories say they still want to spend it, despite saying there is no money for hospitals, schools and benefits! The Lib-Dems say there could be a cheaper option. The government coalition plans no decision this side of a 2015 election. The media report hints that Ed Miliband and Labour will go for the cheaper-nuclear-weapons option. Yet nuclear weapons, even cheaper, can only “defend” by threatening mass murder of civilians. Labour should oppose them outright. 93 MPs have signed an Early Day...

14 November will see Europe’s first ever continent-wide general strike. It will be far from complete, but workers in several different countries will be out “for jobs and solidarity in Europe: no to austerity”. There will be full one-day general strikes in Spain and Portugal. Greek unions are expected to follow up their two-day general strike on 6-7 November by striking again on 14 November. In Italy, the CGIL union federation has called a four-hour general strike. According to some reports there will also be general strikes in Cyprus and Malta. In France, the unions are organising numerous...

On 3-4 November I attended, on behalf of AWL, the annual conference of L’Etincelle, a French Trotskyist group with whom we have had contact and discussion since about 1997. From its origins in the mid-90s to 2008, L’Etincelle was a faction in a larger Trotskyist organisation, Lutte Ouvriere. It still officially styles itself “the Etincelle faction of Lutte Ouvriere”. It was expelled from LO in September 2008. The trigger for the expulsion was the refusal of town councillors, members of the faction, elected on the LO ticket, to accept a new LO policy that year of joint lists for town council...

Mere weeks before yet another brutal cuts budget in Ireland (backed by the Irish Labour Party as a junior partner in coalition government), the United Left Alliance (ULA) appears to have fallen apart. Formed in November 2010, the ULA won five seats in the Daíl in the February 2011 elections. The Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party formed the bedrock of the organisation, along with the Tipperary-based Workers and Unemployed Action Group (WUAG). However, the ULA has been plagued from its inception by problems of programme, democracy and the attitude of its two major components, which...

The Left Stream of Synaspismos (the largest component of Greece's left-wing coalition, Syriza) has responded to the Syriza leadership's proposals for a draft programme for the new unified party which Syriza aims to become. This is a longer version of this article than in the printed paper . The leadership draft states that "the fate of Greece is interrelated with the fate of Europe". "Our Europe is against today's Europe of neoliberalism and growing authoritarianism... Our Europe is the Europe of nations, the Europe of revolutions, the Europe of welfare state, the Europe of scientific...

Health workers across the country face severe attacks on their terms and conditions unless a deal stitched up between health unions and national employers can be stopped. For over a year, NHS Trusts at a local level have been threatening and attacking terms and conditions guaranteed under the national "Agenda for Change" (AfC) agreement. Central Manchester NHS Trust was one of the first, imposing changes including linking incremental pay increases to sickness, a move that was later challenged and overturned in court. More recently, Trusts in the South West have begun planning a breakaway from...

Members and friends of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty met in London on the weekend of 27-28 October for our annual conference. Some Workers' Liberty conferences see big controversy around a particular debate or debates (when I first met the AWL it was debating the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland; more recently there was an argument about raising the slogan “troops out now” for Iraq). This conference wasn't like that. There were no big disagreements about policy, with most discussion focused on assessing our work over the last year and planning for the next. (Becky Crocker / John...

Electrical construction workers and other trade unionists staged an occupation of the lobby of the Office of Rail Regulation in Holborn, central London, on the morning of Friday 2 November, as sparks continued their battle against blacklisting and anti-union victimisation. The Office of Rail Regulation oversees health and safety standards on railway sites, and only recently hosted a conference which applauded the role of union health and safety reps in the workplace. They are a publicly-funded regulator, and sparks were demanding that they take account for the outrageous anti-union...

Cleaners employed by three companies across four rail services launched a coordinated 48-hour strike on Friday 2 November, in a prelude to a possible national strike across all eight of the RMT union's live disputes involving cleaners in the rail sector. Cleaners employed by ISS on East Coast mainline and London Midland trains, Churchills cleaners on the Tyne & Wear Metro, and Carlisle cleaners on the First TransPennine Express picketed stations in London, Newcastle, Bletchley, Northampton, Warrington, Hull, and Manchester. The strikes are offensive in character, making positive demands on the...